There are few ingredients more beloved than honey. From its source to its flavor to how the sweetener makes people feel, honey simply stands out in the growing category of all-natural sweeteners. Perhaps because it’s one of the only truly natural sweeteners available to food and beverage manufacturers.
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Honey does not need to be processed into a powder, syrup or concentrate to be used in commercial food and beverage formulas. We have honey bees to thank for this. They naturally transform nectar into honey that is used in products in the baking, deli, snacking, confectionery and sauce categories.
Why formulate products with honey? Because that’s what consumers want. It also makes your products taste really good. Here are some other reasons:
Honey is a natural source of a wide array of nutrients, including trace amounts of 7 vitamins, 11 minerals, 5 antioxidants and 17 amino acids. Honey also features a complex mixture of more than 20 carbohydrates, which gives the ingredient its trademark sweetness. But it’s not all sweet with honey, the ingredient also contains acids that help balance the flavor profile and complements other flavor notes in a formula.
Ask any product developer to rank product attributes in order of importance, and taste always comes out on top. That’s great news for products made with honey, as the ingredient’s trademark taste is beloved by people around the world. And, because honey’s complex composition contains a mixture of carbohydrates and acids, the ingredient blends in nicely to a formula without overwhelming it with sweetness.
Honey has a complex composition because Mother Nature is complex. The minerals, vitamins and acids found in honey are present because bees forage on flowers that pull nutrients from their environment. The bees take the nectar they collect from these flowers and transform it to honey inside of the beehive. Honey bees will generally make more honey than they can ever consume, and the extra honey they don’t need is extracted by beekeepers and sent to food manufacturers to develop honey-sweetened cereals, soft drinks and snacks.
As consumers continue to monitor sweetener intake, it’s not surprising that food and beverage manufacturers have minimized the impact sweeteners have on a product. That’s not the case when honey is used. It’s one of the few sweeteners that always finds its way onto product packaging graphics. It’s a clean label sweetener that looks just as good in the ingredient deck as it does in a product’s name.
Honey is the most preferred sweetener in food and beverage products, according to the International Food Information Council’s Perceptions and Use of Dietary Sweeteners in .
Let’s face it: homebrewing is a cool hobby. I mean come on, making your own beer… it doesn’t get any better.
This “cool factor” is enough to start many people on the road to becoming a brewing hobbyist, but just in case you’re still on the fence, have some doubts or questions, or believe it’s something you can’t do; let me assuage those uncertainties. You can be a homebrewer! Listed below are ten good reasons to take up this noble and fun hobby.
The price of ingredients for a 5 gallon batch of beer varies extensively depending on the style you plan to brew and the ingredients involved, but in most cases it will be less expensive then buying a six pack of comparable beer. No, it’s not gonna be cheaper than buying Bud Light or any other macro beer, but if you’re thinking about homebrewing my guess is you don’t drink these cheap beers anyway. It will also depend on how you buy your ingredients.
For example, you can buy individual ingredients or buy pre-packaged ingredient kits.
Most newbies to brewing opt for the ingredient kits. On top of this, you have to consider the different types of ingredient kits. An extract kit will usually cost a bit more than an all-grain kit and, generally, kits are more expensive than buying the ingredients piecemeal. But you could say the kits makeup for it in convenience.
As an example let’s compare a slightly more expensive kit, the Belgian Trippel Extract Kit, to buying a six-pack of New Belgium’s Belgian Trippel with usually runs at least 7 or 8 dollars.
So, to the math my friend. It’s a 5 gallon batch kit. There are 128 fluid ounces in a gallon.
128 x 5 = 640 fluid ounces 640 fluid ounces / 12 ounces per bottle = 53 bottlesNow because of some unavoidable loses in brewing — and because it evens everything up — let’s just say 48 bottles or 2 cases or 8 six packs of beer. The price for the kit is $50, so….
50 / 8 = $6.25 a six pack of homebrewCompare that to the 7 or 8 dollars the New Belgium Trippel retails for and you can see you save money. Plan and simple… and for the most part, this math will generally hold true across the board.
The history of brewing beer stretches back into the Neolithic. That’s 9,000 years of tradition you have the opportunity to take part in. Most of this history is on the small scale. Long before brewing became a commercial practice it made up an important piece of the daily life in the home and community, and the beer produced was a significant part of the daily sustenance.
You have the distinct opportunity to continue these traditions; to carry on brewing practices on a more intimate, in-the-home scale.
Many people seem to have this idea that all sorts of special expensive equipment is needed to start homebrewing. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
You can by a “Starter” Equipment kit for around $75, and it will have everything you need to brew your first batch of beer. This is a great way to dip your toes into the hobby to see if it’s something you want to proceed with.
Sure there are other pieces of equipment that are handy to have, that make the brewing life easier, but for your first couple of down and dirty batches of beer a minimalist equipment kit is all you really need.
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Plus, maybe a few extras when it comes time to bottle or keg your new creation, but all told you can get all the essentials you need for under 100 dollars.
There’s nothing like a homemade gift. It speaks of thought, caring, and love in a way a bought gift can never attain. Homemade beer makes a great gift no matter the occasion and believe me people will be impressed.
Brew up a special batch for a wedding. Need some Christmas stocking stuffers? That Winter Warmer you’ve been aging for the last month would be perfect. Have a beer-loving friend about to celebrate a birthday? Sounds like it’s time to brew a chocolaty birthday-cake porter. Why bring wine to that party when you can bring a nice corked bottle of Belgian Tripel (unless you’ve made the wine yourself of course. Then by all means bring the wine).
Anyone can make beer equal to those lining your local bottle shop. It’s not rocket science it’s brew science, and… *whispering* you don’t even have to know the science bit to do it. It can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it. If you can follow directions, have good cleaning practices, and are good to your yeast; you’re beer will turn out just fine.
Maybe the hardest part of the whole process is bottling your home brew and it’s not actually “hard” it’s just monotonous and time-consuming, which makes it feel difficult. If you find yourself hating the bottling process after your first couple brews you can always pony up a little extra to buy kegging equipment.
Do you know the difference between an ale and a lager? When you stare at the shelves in a bottle shop are you seeing only “light” and “dark?”
Learning the processes, along with the blood, sweat, and tears (hopefully not too much blood) that goes into making good beer will expand your world.
You’ll appreciate great beer more and learn what might be causing that niggling off-taste in sub-par beer. You’ll learn what processes and ingredients create different flavors/aromas and what a difference good ingredients make.
There is no doubt, drinking too much beer isn’t healthy or wise, but the health benefits of beer in moderation has been proven. Beer contains antioxidants, fiber, protein, vitamin B, and is one of the richest sources of silicon.
These nutrients come from the ingredients used in the beer. The malt, yeast, hops, and other ingredients all play a part in the beer’s final nutrient makeup, but it doesn’t end here. Brewing practices also play a significant role, especially filtering. Filtering is something almost all commercial craft brewers do — unless creating a style where some haze is expected. The finer a beer is filtered the fewer of these nutrients make it into the finished beer. Brewing at home puts you in control. Don’t filter and you’ll have healthier beer.
But you can go a step further here. Ancient brewers used many herbs and other ingredients (raw honey for instance) that produced a product often much closer to a health tonic than a simple libation. Very few of these herbs have found a place in commercial brewing.
Nettles, Yarrow, Sage, Dandelion, Heather, Chamomile and many, many other plants with amazing health benefits are all options to the adventurous homebrewer. Just be sure you research the herb a bit before you brew with it; there are a few out there that can have negative effects.
Brew at home and you’re in charge. You can experiment in avenues that never make it to the commercial shelves. Love a particular brew from a particular company, odds are you can find a clone recipe for that specific beer somewhere online, and you’ll be able to make it cheaper then you can buy it. Have you always wondered what a particular herb might taste like in a beer; now’s your chance to find out. Want to add a hint of cherries to thatIPA extract kit you just bought; no one is stopping you. Find an old historical recipe with no commercial equivalent; brew it up.
Brewing beer is an adventure! From the adventure of perfecting your brewing practices and ingredients until you have a spot-on replica of a given beer style, to the adventure of going into uncharted waters and brewing something weird and wonderful.
There is something wonderful about creating great yourself. Painters, writers, bakers, carpenters, cooks, jewelers, and on and on all find deep-seated pleasure in the craft of bringing something of themselves into the world.
Knowing what makes great beer and being able to replicate the process is empowering. You can go home after a long day at work pull a beer from the fridge and enjoy something you’ve made. You can go to a pub have a beer and taste discerningly, knowing that if you really wanted to you could go home and work up an exact replication or make some slight change.
Homebrewing is freeing. You are no longer tied to what’s available on the shelves or in the brewpub.
You’d be hard put to find a town without some sort of homebrewing club. This is a social hobby and these guys and gals love beer and love helping others start their own brewing journey. If you have questions or need a little help with a process there is no better place to seek answers. You’ll build new friendships in a community of like-minded hobbyists.
A great way to shorten your brew day is to brew with a friend. You can share a beer or two, along with the work; talk, joke and before you know it the brew will be in the in the fermenter and you’ll be raising a toast to a brew day well done.
You really have no excuses now do you? It is a hobby that can be easy, healthy, ever-changing, cheap, innovating, and friendly. What more could you ask for out of a hobby? It’s time to get out there and brew something!
Cheers!
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